Matthew Walker Sr.

One of his aunts, Mattie Walker, having noted what happened, rushed to the other side of the porch, reached down, and grabbed the young child before he could be swept away in the deluge.

[3] When he became grown and married, Matthew left for his own children a recorded tape wherein he recalled memories of his father, Phillip Walker, who served as a Pullman porter during the older gentleman's rather short lifetime.

[3] Walker told his family of the times he spent working in hotels as a bus boy and such to help with his college tuition.

While attending New Orleans University, Matthew Walker met and in 1937 married Alice Willa Gibbs Johnson.

Four children were eventually born to them: Charlotte Rose (who became a general surgeon specializing in oncology and a professor of surgery as did her father), Maxine June (who later married Brandford Giddings Sr., PhD (chemistry)), who became a computer technologist, Matthew Jr., who became a successful and ardent community activist, and Daniel Phillip, who became a microbiologist.

[3] He became a diplomate of the American Board of Surgery about 1946, and received one of two of the highest scores out of eighty persons taking the examination at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

After internship at Hubbard Hospital in Nashville, Dr. Matthew Walker Sr. served as a resident in surgery and gynecology at the George W. Hubbard Hospital of Meharry Medical College and was an instructor in surgery, gynecology, orthopedics, anesthesia, and areas of eye, ear, nose and throat.

Studying under Dr. Edward L. Howes at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Dr. Walker spent 1938-1939 as a General Education and Board Fellow in surgery.

[5] Having returned to the George W. Hubbard Hospital of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1939, Dr. Walker became an instructor in physiology there from 1930 to 1942.

In 1944, he was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Surgeon in The Reserve of The United States Public Health Service for a period of five years.

Principally, his research dealt with wound healing, peritonitis, and penicillin, nutritional and survival experiments following massive reactions of the intestines, vascular surgery, eosinophil counts and adrenocortical response and plasma expanders.

On a Sunday, following the service to which he was accompanied by his family, Walker was known to gather the surplus Church bulletins and carry them to his patients and friends at his beloved Meharry - Hubbard hospital as he made his daily rounds.

Thus, he was often found fishing with heads of businesses, fellow surgeons or doctors, members of his family, or janitors from any institution.

The pair also went abroad to Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, England, Italy where they had an audience with the Pope at the Vatican (even though they were staunch Methodists), and the African countries of Ghana, Liberia, Senegal, and Nigeria.

[2] Matthew loved Africa so, and wished the continent well so much, that he used to send for persons from various African countries to become trained as either nurses or doctors at Meharry.

His family recalls having had many African nurses and doctors to be gathered around the dinner table at their home as Alice, a grand and generous cook, prepared magnificent meals for them.

Taborian, built by an organization of Black people called the Knights and Daughters of Tabor,[10] was set up with an arrangement for its patients to be provided with health care services.

[10] With Taborian Hospital opening on February 12, 1942, this service provided care that preceded Medicare, Medicaid, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO) and other similar ones.

[10] This training occurred at a time when going to Mound Bayou meant a long, hot drive down to the Mississippi town from Nashville.

As a Black person driving, one had to know the places where he/she could stop comfortably for a bite to eat as segregation was still alive during part of this era.

Vanderbilt and other schools joined with Meharry in its capacity of serving as a training site and advisory body for international health.

[15] In total, there are seven other Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Centers throughout Middle Tennessee, using the same philosophy and serving over 28,000 patients.

[18][19] Walker was a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Meharry Alumni Association.

Additionally, though Walker never grew really rich on salary from Meharry-Hubbard, he saw to it that many of his poorer relatives whom he had left in Waterproof and nearby towns were often given money or clothing items to help them along their way.

[citation needed] At the time of his death, he had provided the surgical education to about half of the Black physicians in the United States.

[21] Dr. Charles Johnson, a Meharrian, wrote the following: "Matthew Walker was well-known and highly regarded as a teacher and surgeon.